Budget 2024 – Electric Cars: The government on Tuesday proposed fully exempting customs duties on 25 critical minerals, including lithium, copper, cobalt, and rare earth elements. This will likely result in reducing the prices of lithium-ion batteries and, consequently, cutting the prices of electric vehicles since EVs use lithium-ion batteries, which constitute a major part of the overall vehicle cost.
While presenting the Union Budget 2024 in parliament, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said, “Minerals such as lithium, copper, cobalt, and rare earth elements are critical for sectors like nuclear energy, renewable energy, space, defence, telecommunications, and high-tech electronics. I propose to fully exempt customs duties on 25 critical minerals and reduce BCD on two of them.”
“This will provide a major fillip to the processing and refining of such minerals and help secure their availability for these strategic and important sectors,” she added. However, no announcements were made on FAME III, which was something the automobile sector was anticipating from the budget 2024 to boost electric vehicle adoption and manufacturing in the country.
But, the good news is the government is working on the third phase of the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid and Electric Vehicles (FAME) scheme and is likely to be implemented in the near future.
HD Kumaraswamy, Minister for Heavy Industries and Steel, recently told the news agency PTI that the government is working on the FAME III scheme. However, it will not be featured in the upcoming Union Budget
“In the future, some months or some future days it is going to be implemented” he further added to the statement.
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